Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Outright Corporate Theft

If you want an eye-opening look into the depths of the ripoff of taxpayers in the last six months in the name of saving the economy, be sure to listen to Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren on yesterday's episode of Fresh Air on NPR.

Warren was also chairwoman of the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) first panel meeting.

Not that it seemed to matter. You can listen to her talk about how the federal government -- especially Henry Paulson -- rammed through programs that absolutely did not respect American taxpayers and, in fact, gave them the worst deals in all these mysterious transactions, while powerful corporations got sweet-heart, favorable deals that gave them 10s of billions of dollars, literally, to do whatever they wanted.

And Warren, by necessity of her position, clearly must be circumspect. Her curt, one-word answers reveal her true feelings about this travesty.

It's clear that over the last few months hundreds of billions of dollars have essentially been given -- just given -- to large American corporations to do whatever they want to do with it. No accountability, no transparency, nothing.

American taxpayers have gotten ripped off in perhaps the most extreme transfer of wealth ever. And they don't even fucking know it.

Perhaps most culpable of all are the so-called "financial journalists" who have reported essentially none of this. They have never been more than corporate lackeys for Wall Street and have seemed utterly incapable of escaping that role.

Someday -- it won't be for decades -- this financial "crisis" will be dissected and documented. No one -- not anyone -- is going to look clean. Corporations and their executives will be revealed for the selfish pigs they are, the middle class for the dupes they always have been, and financial journalists for the useless, ass-licking peons they always were.

Of course, it will be about $2T too late. And the worse fucking thing is that the middle class doesn't even know they've just been fucked hard up the ass.

I should note I agree with charles here that all the b*st&rds are in on it, with no end in sight, but who controlled House and Senate for so long...

Lapham had a wonderously thunderous denunciation of the whole sh*t swindle several months ago in Harpers. Certainly the weakening of Glass-Stigall precipitated this mess, and the bankruptcy bill made it easy.

Cut taxes on the rich; fight wars that put money into the pockets of defense contractors; cut wages; get people hooked on debt to make up the difference; deregulate Wall Street and when they crater use taxpayer money to pay bonuses to the bankers who created the mess while keeping their banks from failing.